I also plan on an aluminum 13 ft dinghy. I dove out of one in Australia years ago. Definitely the way to go. Which one did you go with?

Duncan mentioned to me to keep that weight to 600lbs a couple weeks ago. Your 800lbs seems more like what i'd need capacity for. Cant wait to see pics of your davit system.

We have an all aluminium dinghies which are Aussie made and are a great addition. They handle fantastically and are very stable. Check out Ocean Craft Au. We have two of these dinghies on board so the kids have some independence without leaving us stranded. We use only 2 stroke Yamahas and have a 25hp & 15hp Enduro's plus a 5hp plus a 3.5hp Malta.
The two small engines are for puttering each of the dinghies whilst the two bigger engines are used for distance.

I may have mispoken. These might be LiPO batteries. Because the 80% looks familiar.

Yeah, Hugh those are LiFePo4 batteries. No one is really doing regular Li-ion batteries in these sorts of applications (that I've seen) primarily due to safety and cost.

FYI for the poster who compared capacities, when you say "30%" usable capacity you're talking about lead acid batteries. The reason for the 30% is that you don't want to discharge lead acids below 50% state of charge, and due to Peukert's Law it's very inefficient to charge them much over 80% other than by shore power or solar if you get through bulk charging. All of the normal rechargeable lithium chemistry batteries (including Li-ion) can be safely and repeatedly discharged to 30% SOC (or lower), and the batteries will accept very high chargingcurrent until more or less full.

Yeah, Hugh those are LiFePo4 batteries. No one is really doing regular Li-ion batteries in these sorts of applications (that I've seen) primarily due to safety and cost.

FYI for the poster who compared capacities, when you say "30%" usable capacity you're talking about lead acid batteries. The reason for the 30% is that you don't want to discharge lead acids below 50% state of charge, and due to Peukert's Law it's very inefficient to charge them much over 80% other than by shore power or solar if you get through bulk charging. All of the normal rechargeable lithium chemistry batteries (including Li-ion) can be safely and repeatedly discharged to 30% SOC (or lower), and the batteries will accept very high charging current until more or less full.

This is the first time that I've read LiOn can go down to 30% or lower. I guess you can, but you'll significantly reduce the life of them. Many articles I've seen say its not really a good idea to go below 70%.

If I could walk every boater in the world through this boat, vinyl flooring would become the #1 choice in every anchorage and marina. It's the best stuff I've ever seen or walked on.

I was sort of stuck here, as I would like to have a "look and feel" of good hardwood floor, yet without worries about water damage etc. I completely overlooked vinyl, I used to think of it as a low quality "kitchen floor" stuff. After seeing your video, I looked at some of the new genereation luxury vinyl floors and was amazed with the quality. For me, the choice for floor is now obvious!

This is the first time that I've read LiOn can go down to 30% or lower. I guess you can, but you'll significantly reduce the life of them. Many articles I've seen say its not really a good idea to go below 70%.

It depends on the battery and chemistry. I'll read the article - I haven't read that before. However I run a group making long life ultra-low voltage electronics for tracking systems (think 3-4 battery life from a 1000 mAh 4.8 volt Li-ion polymer cell), so I'm somewhat versed in low voltage Li-ion cells. We regularly use 25% SOC as our cutoff limit. It reduces life slightly versus, say 50% SOC, but not enough to matter. LiFePo4 is much better in this regard than regular Li-ion. Ultimately this has much to do with construction of the battery and the mixture of materials.

As an aside, with most lithium rechargeable batteries the worst thing you can do to them is charge them to 100% and let them sit. They hate that. 50% SOC is usually the preferred long term storage state.

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Hugh, one of the pictures of your bank shows them as Mastervolt LiON.

The Mastervolt "lithium ion" batteries are actually LiFePo4. See the specs on the Mastervolt site. In all fairness LiFePo4 is a lithium ion technology, just not the type normally used in smaller cells (and Tesla cars). In conventional use, when most people refer to Li-ion they're referring to lithium nickle cobalt and lithium manganese cobalt batteries.

Another of my little experiments was tested today, and the results were even better than I hoped. We fired up the Fusion entertainment system and played with the different zones. In previous boats (and most boats that I looked at), the zones were all in the saloon and cockpit. Not much music forward on the boat, and not a lot of sound through the hulls. To fix this with Wayfinder, I moved a zone into each of the forward staterooms, and we positioned the speakers so they aimed at the overhead hatches. There are volume controls in each stateroom, so the owner and guests can play music from their own source, or tune into the master source. They can also power their speakers on and off and control the volume.

But what's really cool is when the entire boat is playing the same music. You move down into one of the hulls, and the music is still crystal clear. You go sit on the bow seat, and the music is funneled toward you through the hatches. Before, you had to blast the music to even hear it if you were up on the trampolines at anchor. And you would never hear a peep forward of the saloon if you were under sail. Now, the entire boat is bathed in sound, and it should be underway as well as sitting still.